


the sins that in us the world shall commit

by presumptious_quirks



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Conversations at the Bedsides of Enemies, Harry is Not Coping Well, M/M, Neither Is Draco, Pre-Relationship, Small mentions of blood, brief but irritated appearance from pansy, brief mentions of violence, its harry's inner monologue the boy needs somewhere to vent, they're both not having a great time rn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27422368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/presumptious_quirks/pseuds/presumptious_quirks
Summary: 'Sorry?'''Sorry',' Malfoy repeats in an exact approximation of his tone, though the hesitation is replaced with high-brow disparagement. ‘Are you even aware of how to properly apologise?''Uh. No?''Unbelievable,' Malfoy says, passing a hand over his face. 'And they say he is the rock to which the Wizarding World pins its hopes.'
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	the sins that in us the world shall commit

For a moment Harry thinks of just forcing his way into Malfoy’s confidence, browbeating him into spilling his secrets, leaving bruises on his skin just to know someone's there. Just to know that someone else feels it too.

Hermione wears a concerned look at dinner, and Harry can feel her brain whirring behind those misleadingly innocent eyes. 

Ron chews on between them, oblivious to the charged air that is slowly infecting the whole castle, and for a moment Harry is so jealous he can't breathe. 

He breaks a quill in History of Magic, held too tight between his fingers, the scar on the back of his hand shining under the musty light.

_I must not tell lies._

Harry lies awake at night, buries the sound of his nightmares in his pillow, because the world is falling apart and Malfoy looked pale that morning.

*

Ginny stares at him sometimes, when she thinks he isn't looking. Not the old way, not like she used to. No, she stares at him like she isn't sure whether to put her faith in him or not. 

*

Malfoy isn't sleeping; it's obvious to anyone who cares to look closely, which is only Harry, it seems. There's dark shadows under his eyes, hollows painting his cheekbones stark in his pale face, almost translucent where his dark eyelashes fan across his skin.

Harry wants to wrench the truth out of him, wants to bury all their stupid problems and run. 

It isn't the same thing at all.

Hermione speaks to Ron less and less, and Harry wishes Ron would realise where he went wrong. Hermione isn't the type to be won by insults and dismissals. 

Hermione isn't the type to be won at all. 

*

The world is so full of Weasleys. Harry can't think of it too much, the sharp ache in his chest too unrelentingly small to let him breathe around the knowledge of his own mortality, the knowledge that the world depends upon him for something he does not know how to give, and the world is full of Weasleys.

Hermione reads straight through dinner, a heavy, unforgiving tome propped open in front of her against a candlestick. _Dark Magic Through the Ages_ , it says on the front, picked out on the dull leather cover in crimson letters. 

Harry stares at it and feels his scar burn.

*

Harry is crying.

So is Malfoy, but the tears are pain and the blood is soaking through his crisp white shirt, soaking and spilling over and cascading from his split-open veins and Harry is sorry, so sorry, but also horrifically, terribly glad, glad that Malfoy can bleed, that he isn't drained of everything he once possessed.

Snape’s eyes are dark with a violent fury Harry has never seen in him before, his black robes snapping like crow’s wings as he kneels in the spreading pool of pure, unsullied Malfoy blood, and _oh Merlin oh Godric what has he done_ -

Snape raises his wand to Malfoy’s chest, and Harry bites back the sudden, horribly ironic words that threaten to spill from his mouth, the plea of _don’t hurt him_ that almost breaks free.

He thinks Snape hears it anyway.

*

Hermione is as white as a sheet at dinner.

Ron is pleased.

‘You should’ve Avada’d him, Harry,’ he says through a mouthful of trifle. ‘Bloody prat deserved it. Death Eater scum.’

Harry’s vision goes white at the edges. 

‘How can you say that? Malfoy could have died,’ Hermione snaps at him before Harry has a chance to react, and not for the first time he feels a rush of warmth for her unfailing ability to understand him.

For once, Ron looks sheepish enough to apologise, a sullen 'sorry' the only sympathy he can bear to show, but it's almost enough for Harry. 

He can change his mind later, after the war is over. 

If it's over.

* 

Pansy Parkinson is not what he expected.

‘You-’ she snarls at him, jabbing a perfectly polished scarlet fingernail into his chest, ‘-had better fix this mess you’ve got us all into!’

‘Mess?’ He manages weakly.

Pansy glares at him, eyes narrowing. 

‘Draco.' She says, digging her nail deeper into his shirt. ‘You had better fix him, Potter, or I will personally feed you to the fucking owls.’

‘Fix him?’ He repeats, mystified, and Pansy’s left eye twitches dangerously.

‘Yes, _Potter_ ,’ she says, and his name on her lips is a veritable weapon. ‘Fix him. You broke him; _put it right_.’

There's nothing he can say to that; Pansy doesn't seem to need a reply. She jabs his chest one last time, a punctuation point that ends the conversation like an abrupt sword slash, and turns on her perfect scarlet heels, clicking away on the stone steps. 

Harry watches her go.

He's done worse things. 

*

Malfoy is -

Malfoy is not the same.

Harry hates this, hates it with a deep unflinching passion lodged under his sternum, burning up in his ribcage, firing through his veins like Malfoy’s blood spilt from his.

He's pale; that hasn't changed. Harry catalogues the features of his face, the high slant of his cheekbones, the snow - like feathers of his eyelashes, the dark, dark grey of his eyes, called up from the depths and staring at him, staring staring staring. 

‘Malfoy,’ Harry says, because it's something to say.

Malfoy doesn't reply, too caught up in his own head or perhaps just too caught up in his reality.

‘Parkins - Pansy said that I needed to ‘fix’ you.’

It floats there, in the empty air. His words twist and contort into something monstrous, reaching the silent pureblood across from him like everything else always did; too late.

Malfoy swallows.

‘Does she think I'm broken?’

Harry stares. Swallows. Shifts a little, the wood creaking beneath him.

‘I - don't know. I think so.’ 

Bizarrely, Malfoy’s lips twist in a barely-there smile.

‘Finally,’ he says, his hand drifting up to brush a stray strand of hair out of his eyes. ‘I've been telling her that for months.’

Harry can't talk. It's not a new thing, apparently, but it is new that he cannot form a coherent sentence in front of his - what, exactly?

He wants to say rival, but that stopped a long long time ago, Malfoy dropping Quidditch to work on some murky Death Eater plan, the Dark Mark on his arm and bruises on his skin.

‘Do you…’ he attempts, failing to find his words in the intervening moments. Malfoy stares back at him, obliquely refusing to aid his sudden inability to speak. 

It's the most Malfoy-like thing he's done so far, and Harry is so grateful he could scream.

‘I honestly have no clue how you plan to finish that sentence, Potter,’ Malfoy says, and Harry expects him to sneer, smirk, put on his classic, ineffably smug expression and decimate him in the crisply modulated tones of the very posh, except he - doesn't. 

He just - stays there. Propped up against a pile of snow-white pillows that are almost as pale as he is, in the separated quarter of the Healing Wing reserved for convalescence, ignoring the stack of meticulous notes covered surprisingly in Pansy’s jagged handwriting, and staring at Harry.

‘Well, Potter?’

Harry gulps.

‘Uh,’ He stalls, unable to meet Malfoy’s eyes and at the same time unable to look away, the dark grey glinting like a summer storm in the bright light.

Malfoy rolls his eyes, letting out a sigh of preposterous proportions, and Harry knows all of a sudden that it's an act, all of it, the sigh and the resignation and the typical, sophisticated disdain. The thought warms him in ways he can't decipher; doesn't want to decipher. 

‘Do you mind that I nearly killed you?’

Harry winces as the words leave his mouth; he hadn't even known he was going to say that until he said it.

Malfoy stares at him.

‘I find myself somehow incapable of answering that frankly misleading question,’ he says faintly, with a hint of incredulity staining his perfect pureblood accent. ‘You haven't even apologised.’

‘Oh. Uh, right.’ Harry pauses, adjusting his suddenly too tight tie whilst Malfoy eyes him steadily. ‘Sorry?' 

''Sorry',' Malfoy repeats in an exact approximation of his tone, though the hesitation is replaced with high-brow disparagement. ‘Are you even aware of how to properly apologise?'

'Uh. No?'

'Unbelievable,' Malfoy says, passing a hand over his face. 'And they say _he_ is the rock to which the Wizarding World pins its hopes.'

Harry huffs a laugh, an incident that is surprising to even him. He's never known Malfoy to be this - _biteless_.

Malfoy looks away, a slight flush on his abnormally pale cheeks, as if he too is surprised by it.

‘But to answer your question,’ he says slowly, his gaze fixed on the wall opposite him. ‘No. I suppose I don't particularly mind that you nearly killed me. Pansy hates your guts for that, by the way.’

Harry’s lips twitch. ‘I noticed.’

Malfoy echoes the movement, a faint huff of laughter escaping him. ‘She's plotting Scenario Sixteen of Ways to Kill the Chosen One in His Sleep.’

‘Sixteen?’ Harry shrugs. ‘I suppose it's nice to be thought of.’

Malfoy smirks. ‘Scenario Eleven is my favourite. Involves deep social humiliation and immense bodily harm. Rather neat, all things considered.’

Harry hums agreement.

They talk. It's stilted, at first, and strange and Harry isn't entirely sure it's not all some great big test Dumbledore’s designed, but.

They talk, for a while. Harry tells Malfoy about the Quidditch line-up, punctuated by Malfoy’s bone - dry sarcastic little comments put in at every spare moment, comments that Harry is startled to realise are actually quite funny, when not directed at him.

They talk, and the world doesn't end, and Voldemort doesn't appear in a flash of green light and Hermione and the Weasleys are still breathing and Harry -

Harry isn't the Chosen One, or the Boy Who Lived, or the Saviour everyone is desperately hoping he can be. 

He's just Harry, for an hour at the bedside of his sworn enemy, talking about Quidditch like the world isn't currently imploding around them in a supernova of unwanted responsibility. 

It's nice. Harry - _likes it_.

He thinks that maybe this changes things, and - maybe - that's okay.

Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe it changes the course of their lives, but right now, all he knows is that it's okay.

He's okay.


End file.
